Unholy sanctuary

The shelter is in one of the poorest parts of Tel Aviv, an area of run-down strip joints, cheap cafes and patrolling police cars.

There is no sign on the door but the overcrowded four-storey building is now home to at least 200 African asylum seekers, their numbers growing by the day in a new and sudden rush of migrants pouring into Israel.

Occasionally they are rounded up by police and jailed, only to be released again weeks, sometimes months later. Some are lucky enough to secure short-term work permits, though with heavy restrictions; very few ever get the official refugee status they seek and which some among them doubtless deserve.

Yohannes Lemma Bayu is one of the few whose application for asylum succeeded, although it took him five months of campaigning and a 23-day hunger strike. He now he lives legally in Israel on a temporary but renewable residence permit.

He arrived 10 years ago from his native Ethiopia seeking asylum from political persecution - his father had been a minister in a previous government and their family was now under threat from the regime. But rather than leave to join the rest of his family in the United States, Bayu, 35, stayed and established this first shelter in Tel Aviv for the flood of new arrivals.

"I considered Israel a developed and democratic country and I believed Israel is respecting the rule of law. That's why I came here," he said. Like many others, he was also drawn as a Christian to the sites and history of the Holy Land.

In the past five years the number of people crossing on foot through the desert from Egypt into southern Israel has increased dramatically: from several hundred in 2006, to more than 5,000 last year and already at least 2,200 in the first three months of this year alone.

At first most were from Sudan, some from Darfur but many more from the south of the country where they also faced political persecution and human rights violations.

Many had already spent months or years seeking asylum elsewhere, particularly in Egypt.

But then the Egyptian authorities began a crackdown - including one notorious incident in December 2005, when police killed 27 Sudanese migrants in an attack on a makeshift camp in Cairo. That in turn encouraged thousands of others to escape and take the risk of crossing through the desert and into Israel.

Today they continue to come, the numbers now including many Eritreans, again escaping political persecution at home.

Some of the migrants are Muslims, many more are Christians. For Israel, a country built largely on the wave of Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust, this issue has sparked a particularly intense debate.

The Israeli military has stepped up patrols along the Egyptian border and the government has begun planning a costly border fence.

The prime minister, Ehud Olmert, reportedly told a meeting of senior ministers in March: "This is a tsunami that can only get worse. We must do everything we can to stop it."

In the shelter, many sleep on the floor and all rely on donations for food and clothes. Notices are pinned to the walls: rotas to share cleaning duties in the shelter next to advice about legal rights and healthcare facilities.

One Eritrean, who gave his name only as Fisehaye, arrived in Israel seven months ago with his epileptic son Simon, 14. He had fled military service at home, then spent months in camps first in Sudan and then Egypt, before walking over the border into Israel.

"We thought it would be better than the other places we've been," he said. They were arrested by the Israeli military but then dropped off on the streets of Beer Sheva, in southern Israel. He made his way to Tel Aviv where he has shuttled between hospital visits and the shelter ever since. "I'm stuck here," he said. "The living conditions are horrible but I can't go back to my country either."

Along the corridor was another Eritrean, a 30-year-old woman named Teje. After five years in Sudan, she crossed into Egypt and then two months ago into Israel with her husband and their four children. Her husband was later arrested is still in jail.

She had an appointment scheduled with the local office of the UN high commissioner for refugees and hoped it might produce a temporary work permit. "It feels like I've been a refugee all my life," she said.

"We can't continue like this for ever," said Bayu, the shelter's director. "We're doing the government's job."

Israeli officials claim that many of those arriving are coming to seek work, not to escape genuine political persecution.

"I think there is a common assessment inside the government that we have not adequately yet met this challenge," said Mark Regev, a spokesman for Olmert. "But only a very small percentage of these people are refugees. Israel succeeded in building this country to be like a modern, European economy and we are maybe the only such country with a land border with Africa.

"The overwhelming majority of people coming into Israel are people seeking to work illegally."

But critics say the government's response has been haphazard and has fallen short of the requirements of the international convention on refugees.

Anat Ben-Dor is a lawyer who helps run a legal clinic at Tel Aviv University where for the past five years law students and lawyers have given free support to those seeking asylum.

They have so much work now they have to turn people away. She argues that many of those coming do have genuine cause for refugee status, which needs to be properly assessed.

"I'm not underestimating the problem but I think Israel needs to build a refugee status determination system," she said. "Everything they have done has failed. They are trying everything in their power to get rid of refugees and to try and make their lives as difficult as possible."

When the Sudanese first began arriving they were arrested because they came from what is still regarded as an "enemy" country in Israel's on-going conflict with the Arab world.

Later they were released in their hundreds and allowed to work, particularly in resorts like Eilat, but only under stringent conditions.

Then there was an outcry last year when 48 migrants, mostly Sudanese, were deported to Egypt where some were arrested and went missing, and others were sent back to Sudan.

The policy was promptly dropped and instead temporary residency was given to around 600 Darfurians, an acknowledgement of the horror of the genocide they had escaped. Around 2,000 Eritreans have also received six-month work permits in another apparent concession. But further crackdowns are expected.

"This isn't the way the refugee convention is to be implemented," said Ben-Dor. "Every single person asking for asylum should be individually screened and assessed, not be dealt with by group-based decisions. It's not something that's impossible to achieve but I think there's a resistance to accepting the way the refugee convention works."

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